Miraculous (poem)
Miraculous
Tarzan is anxious
In the bedroom, carpeting and air conditioning
are dominant smells, the odor of adhesive and its cool tempering
and the way the cigarette smoke of all her friends
Blends into a suburban climb to the high and dry
He was at his best, filled with animalistic impulse
to save the fallen overboard
Now it isn’t war, and all miracles are merchandise
and Jane grows blander, slyer
She has decided a wig would be easier than her hair
She comes home with boxes, round striped
as though inside he’d find a birthday cake
But she perches the contents on plastic heads
Names them Valerie, Louise, and Shirley
primps them, tells them things she means for him
“Val, don’t marry, what a worry, everything depends on the ladder…
The corporate one, darling, and he won’t move up. Lou, he talks about
what he calls his character. Ask me, Shirl, he’s one all right,
someone must have invented him…”
After their Saturday movie, their second Hitchcock
A parable of the allies he so misses
rising in despise
They should, he tells himself. Go! I should, be gone, fly far, from this alien
thicket, and Jane tucks her blonde tresses
under a short and curly look, dark, inspired
by Suzanne Pleshette
Her name, she says, is Margot
She tans, she asks him why he can’t buy some strapping
and fix that chair, bake brown beside his mate
“Those lines, on you…” Giggles, sips, can barely finish. “Give character. So
distinguished.
Me, I need my miracle creams, and still! These freckles! By the way
why not have that cutie pie pair
for highballs and hot dogs…?”
Coyly puckers her mouth aside, “But maybe they’re chaste and don’t”
“Don’t?”
“Tarz, don’t you want a little spark?”
Miraculous
The Travelers
(2022, Stephanie Foster)